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Dessert

Cream Fritters

A sweet fried fritter made from a milk and almond batter, coated in crumbs and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cream Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the milk with corn starch dissolved in a little cold water.

  3. Add sugar, butter, salt, almonds, and orange water; boil for five minutes.

  4. Stir in the six beaten eggs and spread the mixture about an inch thick on an oiled platter.

  5. Allow to cool, then cut into strips one inch wide and three inches long.

Fry and serve

  1. Roll the strips in fine crumbs, dip in beaten egg, and coat again with crumbs.

  2. Fry in boiling lard until golden brown, then drain on brown paper.

  3. Dust with powdered sugar and serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Almond + corntop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs stir into the hot mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk so the mixture holds its shape when cooled and cut.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets when cooled.
Almonds
Add nutty flavor and texture to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the custard.

The step that matters

Cooling before cutting. The custard must cool fully so the starch and egg set firmly. Cutting it warm makes soft strips that break or lose their shape in the coating and frying.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, butter, almond, corn, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, almond, corn, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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